The fates of two Canadians detained in China need to be sorted out by the rules of international law, says Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, because law and order are Canada’s best bulwarks in a global world swirling in populism and disruption. “We are right now going through our usual process of standing up for them, demanding reasons, demanding justification, demanding fairness within the courts to understand why it is they have been detained,” Trudeau said in an interview on Monday.“That’s what a rule-of-law situation is supposed to be, so we’re saying, ‘Where’s the evidence? Where’s the rule of law? Why is this happening?’” If China proclaims itself to be a nation that embraces the rule of law, Trudeau added, “they have things they have to explain.”The prime minister sat down with me in Montreal on Monday for a year-end interview, in which keeping calm and refusing to take the bait seemed to be repeated themes for him and his Liberal government in 2018. It’s probably not the role Trudeau sketched out for himself when he first became prime minister three years ago — the one-time disrupter who now wants to stay stable and steady in the face of massive disruption; the leader who insisted he was going to reconnect people to politics, who now says he would not want to be called a populist. “No, no,” he said when asked if his brand of politics has any connection to populism, either on the left or the right. “Populism has come to involve an oversimplification that is done to elicit emotional responses, that unfortunately have interfered with rational discourse.” Read more: Canada ‘not immune’ to populism and polarization, Stephen Harper saysTrudeau lashes out at Conservatives over migration ‘misinformation’Opinion | Susan Delacourt: Bad times at Queen’s Park look much better from OttawaOn subjects ranging from his relationship ...
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